May 15, 2008

U.K’s Gordon Brown: Preaching One Worldism In U.S., Fighting Patriots At Home

By Brenda Walker

It was a low blow to American patriots. The leader of a historic ally stood on our soil and declared: "We are all internationalists now."

The man: Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The occasion: an April 18 speech, Foreign Policy in an Interdependent World, at the Kennedy Library in Boston .

In case there is any doubt that political elites of the West have wholly bought into the globalization belief that a handful of superstates should form, eventually leading to one world government, the performance of Mr. Brown was dispositive. He is hard at work to institute happy-face soft totalitarianism in Europe. He wants America to get on board with the project.

The ideologies of the left keep failing, but today's proponents believe the One-Worlder version will work, this time for sure. If elites can just eliminate the nation-state democracies with their annoying ideas of representative government and sovereignty, then joy and peace will prevail under the United Nations of Brussels.

The political oligarchs know best, after all, and they are engaged in the important business of creating a future superpower.

Mr. Brown's speech was sophomoric throughout. The Prime Minister began by thanking Senator Ted for his gracious introduction, and added many gratuitous asides about the wonderful Kennedy family and their service to the world.. (Interestingly Brown's Kennedy kudos started with JFK, omitting the clan father Joseph Kennedy, who was sent home from his post of Ambassador to Britain in 1940 for favoring appeasement of the Nazis.)

Here is a typical snip from Brown’s speech:

"And the reality is that we are all affected now by what happens in Asia or Latin America or Africa. And if we do not work across countries and continents to create a globalization that is inclusive for all, then not only will the poorest of the world who lose out react to being excluded, but people in our own countries will feel—as many do today—victims not beneficiaries of the process of change—losers and not winners—and protectionist sentiment will gain ground.

“I am optimistic about the benefits of interdependence, and certain that globalization need not be a zero sum game that says if China or India benefits America or Europe loses. Why? Because over the next 25 years we will see the world economy doubling in size, creating a billion new professional or skilled jobs worldwide, offering opportunity for any who have the creativity, ingenuity, skills and talent to benefit—a time of huge opportunity even if it is also a time of change and risk.

“And in the spirit of John Kennedy who summoned us to think of how we can make our interdependence work for the benefit of all, I believe a new global deal is possible: "

New Global Deal? Does that mean an end to poison products from China? How about a reduction in China's airborne industrial filth that causes 40 percent of the West Coast's air pollution?

Nope—we can be sure the New Global Deal means bigger offices and more power for the unelected bureaucrats the European Union and United Nations already have in excess.

It’s important to note, however, that in Europe, ordinary citizens have not been  cooperating in the process of dismantling nations to construct the EU superstate—just as grassroots revolt by ordinary Americans stopped the Bush-Kennedy-McCain Amnesty/Immigration Surge bill last year.

In 2005, after highly debated public campaigns of pro and con concerning the ratification of the EU Constitution—a bureaucratic document of 800 pages—the French and the Dutch voted it down.

The people don't want it. They don't want their national communities destroyed to fulfill the fantasies of Euro-tyrants.

In a counterattack, the EU bureaucrats concocted a revised scheme to unborder Europe: the Lisbon Treaty, which is essentially a repackaging of the rejected legislation. One report noted the Lisbon Treaty is "96 per cent identical to the old constitution".

Prime Minister Brown has shown his true colors by reversing his government's 2005 promise of a referendum on the EU Constitution.

In doing so, he acted against public opposition to the Treaty, which is hugely unpopular. (See the Heritage Foundation article, The EU Lisbon Treaty: Gordon Brown Surrenders Britain's Sovereignty, by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. and Sally McNamara, March 7, 2008).

A few days ago, Stuart Wheeler, a betting entrepreneur and one of Britain's richest men, was granted permission by the High Court to proceed with a lawsuit to force a vote on the treaty:

"The news was welcomed by the Conservatives who failed to force the Government to hold a referendum on the treaty in the Commons last month.

“The Tories and some Labour MPs believe the treaty is a near-copy of the discredited EU constitution, which Labour had agreed to hold a referendum on if the proposals were brought back.

“Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said: ‘The Government promised a referendum on the EU Treaty which is the Constitution in disguise.

“ ‘It would be a great day for democracy if they were forced to honour that promise.’" [Victory in first round of campaign to force EU treaty referendum, Daily Telegraph, By Christopher Hope, May 2, 2008]

So while Gordon Brown was insulting patriotic Americans with his utopian blather in Boston about a Global New Deal, he had recently attempted to suppress representative government at home over the basic issue of national sovereignty. A patriotic citizen had to take the government to court to make it honor its own pledge.

What a dismal showing for the Labour Party. Brown showed how little he cares about the will of the people.

Human nature being what it is, we can far more easily recognize a boneheaded action by someone else than when we do essentially the same thing.

So it is with globalization. To those who are paying attention from this side of the pond, the increasing unification of Europe into an authoritarian superstate looks like an evil-filled horror movie. The national governments continue go through the motions, but they are giving up their powers to unaccountable bureaucrats in the EU headquarters.

Do the people not care about the creeping Brusselization? Citizens in France and the Netherlands have voted against it, but not everyone has had that chance. The situation looks dire.

But in this hemisphere, the North American Union is chugging along on schedule in a parallel transformation. George Bush and his cronies, Calderon of Mexico and Harper of Canada, deny that anything beyond trade is being discussed in their private meetings. But the idea of North America as a more unified political unit is hinted, following "economic integration."

The people don't want the "Security Prosperity Partnership" (recently renamed the North American Leaders Summit to confuse the public). But it's difficult to fight a concoction that is so disguised in business and trade.

Furthermore, the topic of political globalization is not discussed because American elites all agree that less national sovereignty would be a good thing, in line with the corporate plan that borders be diminished. We have endured months of Presidential campaigning with 24/7 cable news coverage, but somehow the issue of globalization never comes up—even though it's the ideology undergirding both permissive immigration and job outsourcing.

We see a race to the bottom for wages, with future of planet-wide corporate feudalism. But the candidates offer little more than sympathy to down-sized and unemployed workers.

It may boil down to representative government just being too much trouble for many with Ivy League educations. and for their counterparts around the world. Elites have never admired democracy and the rights it gives to the average citizen; they merely put up with it, and bided their time. Now the global economy and accompanying technology has freed them from earlier constraints.

All the compromise and consensus-building required by democracy gets more troublesome with the complexity of modern technological society—not to mention keeping all those billions of people relatively quiet.

A top-down power structure looks like a much better idea to these elites—particularly since they are on top themselves already, conveniently.

Therefore, when Gordon Brown gives a speech to people who share his views on how the world should be run, we shouldn't be too surprised when he calls for a New World Order:

"...we, amid the emerging complexities of the 21st century, must recognize afresh the power of John Kennedy's Declaration of Interdependence. And must firmly root our international system in the values we hold in common--shaping more than a new world order, creating instead a truly global society:  a global society no longer just based on the power of states delineated by borders but on the aspirations of people that transcend borders. "

Thanks, Gordon, for making it clear that borders have no place in the elite vision of the future!